I Swear I Didn't Do It!

There is good news of great joy for us. I have told many stories of one girl in particular, most recently this is the 'Testimonial' girl. Well, last week Monday night she went before the Elders in our church and gave her testimonial for them and they accepted her as a member of the church. Last night, she followed up on that commitment to the Elders with a public profession of faith. What an exciting evening and what an exciting story.

After church, everyone congratulated her and the three others that stood up to profess their faith and some came up to me and said very kind words about my part in her life and to one lady I said, "I didn't do anything." Which is exactly how I felt...I didn't do anything...I never asked her if she wanted to become a member of the church (though the thought often flitted through my mind), I never even asked her if she wanted to go to church with me (my mom can atest to that one!), I didn't do anything. This lady replied with, "Well, you did something!"

I keep a prayer journal so I can see how God works right, so I as I prayed this morning, I very truthfully thanked the Lord for the work he had done in this young girl's life but also refused the fact that I did anything! It was God who moved in her heart and brought her to her knees one night. It was God who gave her the drive to continue to learn about him. It was God who gave her the desire to go to church. It was God that gave her the idea of becoming a member of the church. It wasn't me. The only thing I can come close to doing is meeting her (by chance) in Juvie, taking her to the coffee shop and getting her addicted to smoothies and coffee (we still have our weekly fix), and I pick her up to go to church, that's all I do. I didn't change this girl's heart, I didn't DO anything. It wasn't me...it was God...I just got a front row seat to it all!

Frustrations

Theres a girl I know and work with and love hanging out with but I see little growth. In fact, she has expressed, on more than one occasion, very 'as-a-matter-of-fact' that she is not at all interested in God, Jesus, or Christianity to any extent at this point in her life. For her, it is something like: 'I'll eventually get to it I'm sure but right now I'm going to have fun'.

So I keep pouring into her. Sometimes I feel like I'm wasting my energy and time in what seems to be a dead-end. We've been hanging out weekly until this past February: she got involved with a high school musical and didn't have time and that took about two months. The musical was the end of April, she invited me to go but I didn't because I totally forgot which is genuinely a terrible excuse.

I waited before calling her because I had struggled so much with the relationship and the lack of growth and she calls me a couple weeks ago ready to pick up right where we left off. I'm not ever going to deny someone the availability of a listening ear that won't smack talk, gossip, or let out the dirty little secret because at the very least this girl - any young girl - will know that someone cares...if they only recognize me and not Jesus.

Periodically in our relationship there have been wonderful moments where God fit in and we had an intelligent conversation about God knowing us, planning our lives, fitting in in our other relationships, and even the gospel message...the whole Jesus death, resurrection, and meaning in our lives.
And the Gospel message was totally out in the open, I didn't beat around the bush with it or anything like that...it was just that.

So this has been my greatest frustration thus far at GR YFC. I was ready to let her go and sow her wild oats when she called me a couple weeks ago but instead we got together. At subway last week I dug myself in even farther...she was given an acoustic guitar she badly wanted to learn. She asked her crush and he agreed to but then never showed up. I offered knowing that it would at least be time loving on this girl ('loving on' is a term we used frequently here...I know it sounds wrong in all the terms of the world but loving on is more than just loving someone, loving on to us at YFC is an action...it's pouring all of who you are into every single kid: turning off the cell phone, preserving time, not being distracted at all...no excuses and absolutely no reservations, just 150% all about the kid(s) you're with at that moment...'loving on' just like Jesus).

And loving on this girl was what I had been struggling with the most. I had made peace for the most part, with the fact that this might just be one girl that wasn't part of the elect (yes, I'm a Calvinist to some degree), it was hard and I wasn't completely ready to give up on her obviously but I looked at this moment in time as a sign from God tho that he wasn't yet finished with this girl...he was still giving her opportunities to be with him. So who am I to decided for God that he was done with her?

I still struggle but I must say that yesterday was our first guitar lesson and it went well even tho we broke three strings...one that was brand new...oops. I even apologized that the all the music I had was probably not the kind she would like or choose to listen to (I admitted at this point it was all Christian except three songs or so) but I did it with pride and dignity knowing that God can use that too...I guess I just warned her thats all.

So that's my frustration.

New Car

So do you remember last year's blogs about the car accidents...three in the span of about six and a half months...two of which were not my fault? Yeah, guess what happened yesterday?

Okay so I have a new car today. It arrived in the mail yesterday. If you're wondering why there is only half-wheels and a cord coming out of the radiator then I would tell you that the reason for this is because it's a computer mouse. Check out www.newegg.com...at least I think that's the web address of where Don found it. His new car is black, mine, pretty red. You can even check out what's 'under the hood' thru the windows that are clear. Fun eh?

Last night in Juvie one of my girls did my hair. She was supposed to do it months ago but we set it up for the following week (when we talked about it) and she was released, never returned my phone calls (that's NOT why I called...I wanted to follow up with her) and on and on... Well, she got locked up again and we were talking about it last week so here it is! I love it. The last time I had my hair done, it was so tight that I had to take it out because it was giving me headaches but it isn't doing too bad today so it will probably stay in.

Behind me is my 'wall of flowers' from blogs ago. I've gotten a few letters since then.

And if Jacque from Fiji reads this, just behind my head to the left is the letter you wrote me...that's the only letter I didn't receive this year.

God Bless!

This is Me Today.

Well, to all of those who want to see my latest hair do...here it is. If you look close enough or enlarge the photo, you can see my nose ring. Don't look too close cause the gem came out of it the other day and to change it I have to go back to the parlor and have them change it...haven't done that yet as you may have guessed.

God has been good. We have a plethora of volunteers for the girls to talk to while they are locked up. This is good because there is also a plethora of girls locked up! There are usually two units of girls limiting the max to be 16 but since there are more than 16 girls locked up currently, there is another unit of girls. If this was about three months ago I would have anxiety over this because I would need to visit three units instead of two. Two already gives me a little stress because that is too many girls for little ole me. So now we have five people (me and four others) going in there on a weekly basis AND one (possibly two) more in the works! This means that the minimum of two volunteers per unit can be upheld even when there are three units!

I'm also super frustrated and aggravated today because I'm having computer problems. The internet explorer has stopped responding five or six times in my first three hours here, freezing my computer and opting me to restart. I've restarted 4 times. Our IT guy had me download this Firefox thing which: (a) I don't have time to re-learn, (b) already hate after less than an hour of using, (c) is supposed to be more 'user friendly' but is already most inconvenient because it lacks the tabs so if I have more than one webpage up I need to have a window for each.

Anyway, we had a birthday party for one of our Juvie girls and our ED...they're birthdays were the same day...unofficially. It was really cool. Thats actually where someone got that shot of me above.

I'm sorry but I really don't have anything more entertaining to write. Check back later this week.